I know this is the WineBoard Forum, but I sure wish there were topics for Food (not Food/Wine Affinities), Spirits and Beer. I could sure contribute a whole lot more. The other Wine Forums have these topics and they get an awful lot of traffic.

Personally, I've been doing a lot lately with preserving. I've made the old standard Half Sour Pickles, but I've also made Pickled Shrimp and Salmon & Potatoes in a Jar (the last courtesy of Dorie Greenspan).

As for beer, I'm sure just about everyone has had a Black & Tan (or Half & Half, or whatever you want to call it). Well, I've been experimenting and researching and I've come up with an awesome alternative. Instead of Harp I use Lindeman's Framboise, and in place of Guinness I use Young's Double Chocolate Stout. Awesome taste!!!

How about spirits - Scotch, Irish, Bourbon, Tequila, Vodka, etc. I've discovered an awesome sipping vodka - that's right a real sipping vodka with no ice, no mixers, no garnish, no nothing. It's Karlsson's Gold, and it's made by the guy who invented Ansolut. It's made from 7 varieties of baby potatoes, and each is fermented separately then distilled separately only once and finally blended. Truly fabulous clear spirit, and I'd heartily recommend it to those who limit their sipping to Scotch or Bourbon.

I could go on and on, because there's more to all our lives than wine alone.

Agree too. Last night I enjoyed a well aged Hennepin from Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown with burgers. Before you scoff, they put a live yeast into the finished brew before sealing it like a bottle of bubbly. Ego, it ages.

We can all agree on this till the cows come home, but we've been pushing for these new topics/folders for over ten years and nothing's happened yet. No offense to Alex, but he's having too much fun having fun - tasting really old wines, travelling to wine regions and meeting the resident gliterati, selling all his products on the home page, schmoozing with the local wine mavens like Rob Moshein (known him since pre Wines.com), and whatever. Guys and Gals (still with us, Georgie???), I'm starting to lose patience.

Talked to someone recently about this. I taste about 120 wines a week, and recommend maybe 10% for purchase. So, I'm not some frickin' amateur, but I hesitate to post on any of the wines we taste and purchase because I rarely, if ever, get any kind of response. I also taste up to 30 spirits a week and I would really like to let folks know about them. As a for instance - how many of you have heard of Johnnie Walker DOUBLE Black??? Great new blended Scotch. The basic Johnnie Walker Black is largely Cardhu. Double Black adds a large measure of Caol Ila with a lot of smoke and peat. Love it!!!

We can add new threads to the forum. What we really need to do is to make a mobile app that allows us to post reviews from your cell phones because fewer and fewer people these days write things down or have a computer on hand to leave a review, thus things are left off the posts. So to be clear we want a Spirits, Beer, Food thread?

KC, Thanks for highlighting my 10% of the time activities and jaunts...